Meggan BraddockMeggan

The Mutant Meggan is an empathic metamorph, who can shift her appearance at will, and uses her powers to protect others in England, Otherworld, and the greater multiverse alongside the Super Hero team Excalibur.

Channeling Unwanted Emotions

Meggan Puceanu hails from a family of travelers, allegedly originating from Russia, and her father William apparently possessed terrifying “crawly-dolls.” A mutant metamorph, Meggan is born near Fenborough Station, London, England in the United Kingdom. Born during a blizzard, she instinctively grows fur to protect herself from the cold. Others in the camp superstitiously speculate about the “wolf-child,” their fears molding the empathic Meggan’s form, forcing her parents to hide her from the world. She emerges only at night, but fears the full moon, which inflicts blinding rage and pain. Watching television during the day, she becomes a fan of Brian Braddock, AKA Captain Britain. 

When Meggan’s 17, the reality-warping Sir James Jaspers, AKA Mad Jim Jaspers, takes over the U.K., and rounds up the country’s superhumans; caught by a roadblock, both Meggan and William are sent to concentration camps. Separated from her family, Meggan shares Cell 27 with Sue Parsons, who has a minor psychic aptitude, keeping their hopes alive by sharing rumors about Captain Britain fighting for their freedom. Eventually Jaspers is defeated, the camp fences torn down and the inmates released; memories of Jaspers’ reality warp faded, combining with Meggan’s normal lunar confusion to leave her unsure of how she lost her family. 

Losing contact with Sue, Meggan is befriended by teenagers Micky and Josie Scott, who bring her food and help her stay calm during full moons; however, the unnatural scent of the tramp Sidney Crumb, unknowingly infected by the hero-killing Fury, drives a moon-maddened Meggan to attack him. Omniversal Guardian Roma required the combination of Meggan, Captain Britain and others’ powers for a mission some years hence, so perhaps not coincidentally, Roma’s pawn Captain Britain is close by and Crumb’s screams draw his attention. He and Meggan battle, accidentally dislodging scaffolding that strikes and kills Micky; regaining her senses, an anguished Meggan flees. Guilt-stricken, she secretly watches the Scott house; when she sees Captain Britain arrive after Micky’s funeral to apologize, Meggan reveals herself to do likewise. Mrs. Scott accepts her son’s death was an accident, forgiving them both. After learning of Meggan’s situation, Captain Britain offers to help her find her family, inviting her to stay at Braddock Manor in the meantime.

Empathic Metamorph

An empathic metamorph, Meggan’s form changes at will or with her moods; she can impersonate specific people, or take characteristics from other species, such as claws or fangs. Normally she cannot duplicate another superhuman’s specific powers, unless aided by an exceptional external power source. Even in her usual form she can track people by smell; she can sense all natural forces, such as imminent earthquakes, and electromagnetic and psychic energy fields; and she has a total awareness of her surroundings. With concentration, she can sense nearby life-forms. 

She cannot read minds, but can sense emotions even at great distances. Her empathic abilities allow her to understand any spoken tongue, by comprehending what the speaker is trying to convey rather than understanding the actual language. She can also switch her vision to see the Alshra, or spirit plane. She is vulnerable to possession, and can be negatively affected by dark emotions, magic, pollution or other corruptions of nature, though with effort she can morph to become more resistant to these. 

Meggan can fly at supersonic speeds, and possesses superhuman strength (lifting 2 tons); by absorbing nearby energy, she can increase this in excess of 100 tons or grow to gigantic size. Though her upper limits are uncertain, she once grew to nearly 30 feet to challenge Galactus; however doing so risked draining Earth to destruction and would still have yielded insufficient power for her to overcome the world devourer. 

She can also manipulate natural energy and elements, commanding lava, fire, electricity, winds and light with equal ease; she can switch off electronic hardware, ignite projectile propellants and trigger highly directed earthquakes. 

As the Goblin Princess, her powers are reversed, allowing her to transform others into demonic or twisted versions of themselves. 

Her sheltered childhood initially leaves her with poor reading skills, but her teammate Warlock’s tutoring resolved this.

Insidious Enemies

Growing up, Meggan faces the ridicule of others as well as their projections and judgements of what they think she is and survives concentration camps led by Mad Jim Jaspers. Alongside team Excalibur, Meggan faces off Necrom, a sorcerer intent on destroying the omniverse. She grows in size when she faces the world-eater Galactus, infiltrates the London branch of the Hellfire Club, and survives living in Hell.

James Braddock Jr., AKA Jamie Braddock, teams up with Sat-Yr9 against team Excalibur though Meggan defeats Jamie and saves her teammates from his reality-warping attack. Meggan becomes Jamie’s sister-in-law after she marries his younger brother Brian. As Jamie pursues criminal activity, both Meggan and Brian abandon him but later when he reforms, they all become allies.

Trusted Teammates

Captain Britain is Meggan’s longtime partner on team Excalibur and they share a romantic relationship that undergoes several tests, but they eventually overcome their obstacles and get married. Meggan becomes sister-in-law to Brian’s twin sister Betsy Braddock, AKA Psylocke, and brother Jamie.

Meggan’s Excalibur teammates change over the years as new members join and old ones move on. Her teammates on the original Excalibur team formed by Roma include Captain Britain, Kate “Kitty” Pryde, Lockheed, Kurt Wagner, AKA Nightcrawler, Rachel Summers, AKA Phoenix (later Marvel Girl). Newer members include Cerise, Feron, and Moira MacTaggert; Katherine Anne-Pryde Rasputin, AKA Widget, from Earth-811; Piotr “Peter” Rasputin, AKA Colossus; Douglock (now Warlock); Peter Wisdom; and Rahne Sinclair, AKA Wolfsbane.

In Defense of the Realm

Before marrying Brian, Meggan was attracted to him, partly because the interdimensional matrix energy surrounding him was beautiful, but she lacked confidence, viewing herself as ugly. Seeing Meggan’s aura, telepath and fellow house guest Alison Double told Meggan she could change her appearance. During a subsequent encounter with Resource Control Executive, (RCX)’s Warpies, children changed by Jaspers’ warp, Meggan transformed herself into an elfin blonde, subconsciously making herself physically and emotionally more attractive to Brian, and they became romantically involved while on a mission to Mbangawi. 

Investigating Meggan’s roots in Russia, the couple encountered the witch Baba Yaga, who tried to make Meggan sacrifice Brian; resisting her control, Meggan tapped into the region’s natural magical energies, immolating the witch. Soon after their return to the U.K., Brian’s sister Betsy joined the X-Men as Psylocke just before that team seemingly died, secretly surviving with Roma’s aid. As Roma had planned, this tragedy drove Meggan and Brian to join surviving X-Men Kitty Pryde, Nightcrawler, and Phoenix in forming Excalibur.

Soon after the group’s founding, various factors repeatedly tested Brian and Meggan’s relationship: Meggan inviting their teammates to share the couple’s cramped lighthouse home without asking the territorial Brian; the return of Brian’s old university sweetheart Courtney Ross when Brian had become scared over how desperately Meggan seemed to need him; and Meggan’s empathic mirroring, causing Nightcrawler to become increasingly attracted to her. 

When Excalibur opposed the “Inferno” demon infestation of New York, N’astirh transformed Meggan into the malicious Goblin Princess until the magic-disrupting Soulsword freed her from his influence. For a while afterwards Meggan’s control over her powers lessened; though it was speculated that this was due to her distance from her native shores, other oversea trips without similar problems suggest Meggan simply needed time to recover from the Inferno. 

Shortly after returning to Britain, Excalibur took a cross-dimensional road trip during which Meggan’s weakened empathic control saw her suffer partial psychic mergers with the telepathic Phoenix, until Brian’s hostile reality-warping brother Jamie split their energy matrices apart.

Sometime after Excalibur’s return, Brian’s jealousy regarding Kurt’s interest in Meggan caused a fight between the two men; upset yet unable to stop being whatever they wanted while around them, Meggan took a sabbatical with Phoenix to seek her missing parents. The trail ended in Germany’s Black Forest, where they freed a captive Neuri (one of a mystical race); dying, it showed Meggan her true self on the spirit plane, Alshra, and told her she would not find her parents at this time. No longer so vulnerable to being who others wanted, Meggan returned home, where Brian and Kurt had likewise resolved their issues. The team then battled and defeated Necrom, the foe Roma had brought them together to fight. 

Soon afterwards they were attacked by Brian’s old foe Sat-Yr9, who had murdered and replaced Courtney Ross, and her ally Jamie Braddock; Jamie grotesquely transformed the team, but Meggan resisted Jamie’s reality-warping and forced him to revert the others to normal. Brian briefly neglected Meggan in his obsession to find Sat-Yr9 and avenge Courtney, even brawled with Nightcrawler, but realizing his neglect, he took Meggan on holiday and proposed to her; she accepted. However, after he suffered a temporary power failure when deprived of matrix energy, Meggan became worried that their relationship might be purely based on attraction to each other’s looks. By the end of a trip to Rachel’s dystopian Reality-811 (“Days of the Future Past”) timeline, the couple had overcome this concern, only for Brian to be lost in the timestream as Excalibur returned home to their own world (Earth- 616). Their mutual love allowed Meggan to act as a temporal anchor, but her teammates only knew that Meggan had become completely unresponsive, and took her to Muir Island’s medical facility for treatment and shortly thereafter, the facility founder Dr. Moira MacTaggert joined Excalibur’s ranks. Eventually Rachel, herself a temporal anomaly, assisted by Meggan and sorceress Amanda Sefton, AKA Magik, exchanged places with Brian, sacrificing herself for the sake of her friends.

Her experience as Brian’s anchor gave Meggan increased control of her powers as tested by Moira on Muir after Meggan began displaying the ability to control lava. She now regularly used her empathic and elemental connection to affect the external world, rather than have it affect her. Having relocated permanently to Muir Island, Excalibur spent the next few weeks battling the Phalanx, Black Air and the London Hellfire Club. 

Brian and Meggan traveled to London to buy a ring, but the Dragons of the Crimson Dawn attacked them and kidnapped Brian, intending to use him to open a rift between Earth and their own mystic realm. Excalibur rescued him, but Brian had Meggan use his body’s matrix energy to seal the rift, depowering him. Needing time to adjust, Brian asked Meggan if she could wait for him while he took time away from the team; Meggan agreed, but found she missed him desperately. Her loneliness, her friendship with new teammate Colossus, and her empathic abilities led to an inevitable mutual attraction; though neither acted on it, it strained her friendship with Peter, and left both feeling guilty when Brian returned; however, Brian immediately forgave both of them, and he and Meggan were soon married in Otherworld by Roma whereby Meggan takes Brian’s last name, becoming Meggan Braddock. 

Excalibur disbanded, and Brian and Meggan moved back to Braddock Manor, but were called back into action to defend Otherworld against an attacking Warpie army led by the computer Mastermind. Regaining his powers during this adventure, Brian was crowned as Otherworld’s new king, with Meggan as his queen. During their reign, they empowered a new Captain Britain, Kelsey Leigh, later Lionheart, and with her help, drove back an attack by Morgan le Fay.

When a transtemporal tsunami caused by Wanda Maximoff, AKA Scarlet Witch’s “House of M” reality warp struck Otherworld, Roma sent Brian and Meggan back to Earth-616 to seal the reality breach before it spread. Briefly subsumed within the Witch’s alternate reality, Brian and Meggan became Britain’s monarchs, but soon regained their memories. With time running out, and believing she could survive inside, Meggan entered the rift and sealed it from within, trapping herself between realities. Her inert form was eventually discovered by the Hell-lord Plotka, and when Plotka invaded Earth, he used her to tempt Brian into entering a pocket dimension trap. Realizing that everything else therein were illusions of his heart’s desires, Brian wrongly concluded Meggan was too, his belief making Meggan unable to keep up when he departed, leaving her trapped trying to find her way home through myriad hostile dimensions.

Trapped in hell for many years, she eventually led a demon army that called her Gloriana. When she finally escaped, she found herself face with Victor Von Doom, AKA Doctor Doom, on Vlad Dracula, AKA Dracula’s ship. She was soon reunited with her husband Brian and they, along with MI-13 allies, prevented Dracula and his cronies from invading the U.K.

Meggan joined Brian in starting the Braddock Academy and represented the school when Dr. Henry Pym, AKA Hank Pym, led a Contest of Champions event. She helped him, Jennifer Walters, AKA She-Hulk, and James Howlett/Logan, AKA Wolverine, with the event. Meggan and Brian later reunited with their former Excalibur teammates to welcome Nightcrawler back from the dead. 

Meggan and Brian soon welcomed a daughter into their lives, Margaret, whom they called Maggie, and who started speaking her first words at around three months old. When their Excalibur teammates Kurt, Rachel and Kitty visited the new trio, Meggan stole away and sobbed. Kitty and Rachel followed, finding Meggan crumpled on the floor. She revealed how her daughter was growing up beyond the normal rate and her intelligence had already surpassed her own. Meggan expressed frustration at how she still struggled with reading. Kate and Rachel reassured her with words of wisdom, and the friends were soon attacked by an old enemy of Rachel’s. They swiftly defeated the foe and Meggan asked her friends if they’d all be Maggie’s godparents, to which they all heartily accepted.

Opposing Nate Grey, AKA X-Man, from remaking the world, Meggan and all other mutants suddenly vanished, but were in fact transported to a world X-Man created a utopia of sorts where there were no X-Men and every mutant’s memory was rewritten to reduce resistance. In this new world, Meggan was an actress who worked closely with Nightcrawler, a fellow co-star whom she had a relationship with and a daughter, Tenia Jean. When other mutants resisted X-Man’s world, he ultimately released them all, returning them home and restoring their memories, though Tenia seemingly perished in the process.  

When the sovereign mutant nation-state of Krakoa was established, many mutants joined their brethren on the island of the same name. Meggan and Brian stayed in Otherworld while her sister-in-law Betsy joined the Krakoans. Soon evil sorceress Morgan le Fay laid siege to Otherworld and possessed Brian. Betsy returned and took up her brother’s mantle as Meggan’s brother-in-law Jamie became the new King of Otherworld and Brian, freed from Morgan le Fay, became henceforth Captain Avalon. 

Otherworld soon suffered another assault by Arakko, and Betsy was shattered into pieces, but was apparently still alive somewhere in the multiverse. Meggan felt a pull to the site of the crime. She asked her king’s permission to depart on a mission with the new Excalibur team that included Remy LeBeau, AKA Gambit, Anna Marie LeBeau, AKA Rogue, Jubilation Lee, AKA Jubilee, and Julio Richter, AKA Rictor, to investigate. Her king allowed it, and she kissed Brian goodbye, leaving Maggie with him. Once in the wilds of Otherworld, Meggan, thanks to her faerie heritage, felt unburdened and reconnected to the land. She communed with the fairies and cast a spell to find Betsy but needed the others that she traveled with to do so. After they joined hands, they were soon connected to the Captain Britain Corps—the multiversal group of Captain Britains made up of variants of Betsy. They reassured Meggan that they would search for her missing Betsy as well, who eventually returned and was restored thanks alternate dimension versions of Warren Worthington III and the assassin’s body Betsy used to inhabit, Kwannon, AKA Psylocke.

When the mutant-hating despot Merlyn and his right-hand man King Arthur, took over Otherworld, bent on wiping out the “witchbreed,” he sent Furies to hunt them. Meggan joined the Knights of X to resist them and restore order to her beloved home. The team began a search for the Siege Perilous, a magical amulet and a kind of holy grail to help defeat their enemies. Their quest led them to the mysterious wasteland Mercator, where Meggan and the others faced their innermost fears. They soon discovered that Mercator was the Siege Perilous and when opened, it led right to Krakoa where the mutants fought alongside the Knights of X against Merlyn’s forces, who were swiftly defeated.

With Otherworld settled, Meggan soon helped Betsy against one of their foremost foes: a returned Morgan le Fay and defended her husband against an attack by Furies—cybiotes that hunt the super-powered.